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This 'Mario Maker computer' puts Nintendo's own creativity to shame

Not much is known about Nintendo's next-generation video games console, and how it might rescue the company from the financial doldrums. But amid all the rumours of a handheld-living room hybrid and strange touchscreen controllers, WIRED hadn't considered that Nintendo's next system might actually run inside one of its best games in recent years.

In truth, we're not quite ready for a Mario-themed version of Inception just yet. But the release of a new level created inside Super Mario Maker which functions as a working computer has at least set our imaginations running.

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But this level by 'Trousers' might be the most conceptually impressive yet. Named 'Run a Tiny Computer!' the level delivers by literally allowing you to run a few simple sums -- 0+0, 0+1 and 1+1. The key -- as has also been the case with the increasingly advanced sub-culture that builds computers (and presumably one day a working version of Minecraft?) inside Minecraft -- is to find a way to make reliable logic gates. If you can discern a method to construct an on-off gate that interacts reliably with others, you have the building blocks of a computer. Thanks to Mario Maker's walking Bob-ombs, coins and P-switches, those elements exist in the game.

There are limits to Mario Maker that mean computers constructed inside the software will not get much more complex than this -- they include the dimensional limits of Mario Maker levels, which are tight, and the fact that the player still has to perform a tricky role as the computer's clock, running and jumping in time to make the computer work, which many players might find taxing. Still, as a proof of concept it's hard not to love. The course ID, if you want to play it, is 2DE4-0000-01b3-642b.

Nintendo itself could do with embracing elements of this creativity. It admitted this week that although it sold 3.3 million copies of Mario Maker, and 22 million Wii U games as a whole, only 12.6 million Wii U consoles have been shipped in its lifetime. Overall it missed profit and revenue targets, and is pinning hopes of a revival in fortunes on its upcoming smartphone games with Japanese publisher DeNA, Amiibo sales (it shipped 10 million plastic figures last year) and the NX, due to be unveiled close to E3 in June.